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You may have to experiment with export formats from Papers some, but I think files and tags should work. Collections will definitely not work, though; they're not included in any standard exchange format.

Just wanted to leave a quick update, in case anyone is following a similar path in transitioning from Papers3 to Zotero...

1. Exporting to an RIS file works, but it's less than ideal because some information seems to go missing while irrelevant/incorrect information is added. For example, if a book in Papers is listed as being published in 2019 (no month or day) and in its second edition, upon import the publication date given will be January 1, 2019 and the edition data will be gone. The same is true of journal articles. If a journal article only has year information (e.g., 2009), on import it will also have New Year's Day for that year listed as well (January 1, 2009).

This probably isn't a huge issue, except for those who regularly use citation styles that require giving year, month, and day (if available).

2. This problem doesn't seem to arise when exporting/importing with BibTeX. However, I've had problems with importing websites with BibTeX.

3. This problem also doesn't arise when exporting/importing with XML. There are also no issues with importing websites when using XML. However, it's messy—for each item that gets imported a note is automatically generated in Zotero that reads "The following values have no corresponding Zotero field:label: r17379". That's every single item.

Currently it looks like importing via BibTeX is the most promising solution. However, all of the methods above have allowed me to transfer my tags, which is great.

However, it's messy—for each item that gets imported a note is automatically generated in Zotero that reads

Those notes are all tagged with _Endnote XML so deleting them all at once is a single operations (click tag, select all, delete)

To be clear, there is a space between the & and apos; ?

Some further updates:

1. With the **XML method**: Seems to treat book chapters in edited books as edited books by omitting the book title (1a). Also, when dealing with an edited book by itself, converts editors to authors (1b). See examples below:

(1a). Incorrect (APA): Gibb, R., & Kovalchuk, A. (2018). Brain development (R. Gibb & B. Kolb, Eds.). London, UK: Academic Press.
Correct (APA): Gibb, R., & Kovalchuk, A. (2018). Brain development. In R. Gibb & B. Kolb (Eds.), *The Neurobiology of Brain and Behavioral Development* (pp. 3–27). London, UK: Academic Press.

(1b). Incorrect (APA): Gibb, R., & Kolb, B. (2018). *The Neurobiology of Brain and Behavioral Development*. London, UK: Academic Press.
Correct (APA): Gibb, R., & Kolb, B. (Eds.). (2018). *The Neurobiology of Brain and Behavioral Development*. London, UK: Academic Press.

2. With the **BibTeX method**: Omits edition from chapters in edited books (2a). Also, does not import abbreviated journal names (2b). See examples below:

(2a). Incorrect (APA): Baron, I. S. (2010). Maxims and a model for the practice of pediatric neuropsychology. In K. O. Yeates, M. D. Ris, H. G. Taylor, & B. F. Pennington (Eds.), *Pediatric neuropsychology: Research, theory, and practice* (pp. 473–498). New York, NY: Guilford.
Correct (APA): Baron, I. S. (2010). Maxims and a model for the practice of pediatric neuropsychology. In K. O. Yeates, M. D. Ris, H. G. Taylor, & B. F. Pennington (Eds.), *Pediatric neuropsychology: Research, theory, and practice* (2nd ed., pp. 473–498). New York, NY: Guilford.

(2b). Incorrect (AMA): Shapiro-Mendoza CK, Lackritz EM. Epidemiology of late and moderate preterm birth. *Seminars in fetal & neonatal medicine*. 2012;17(3):120–125
Correct (AMA): Shapiro-Mendoza CK, Lackritz EM. Epidemiology of late and moderate preterm birth. *Semin Fetal Neonatal Med*. 2012;17(3):120-125.

That's ok, I understand that neither method will be perfect—so I'll just have to opt for the one that produces the best result without requiring too much post-import editing. At the moment that looks like the XML method, since I only need to edit out the apostrophe problem in a text editor, change some authors back to editors, and add book titles to chapters in edited books. Based on your experience, would you say that there are any particular reasons to prefer the BibTeX method, or maybe some other method altogether? Since the RIS method adds extraneous (and incorrect) information, it is the least preferred.

(An aside: I another difference I noticed that is the XML method will import author initials with periods, while the BibTeX method strips periods).

Generally, Endnote XML is the most standardized and complete of the widely used formats, so where well implemented, that's preferable.

Great! Glad you got things working.

Maybe post it to http://gist.github.com and link here?

Hi I just used this approach, which did largely clean up my imported library from Papers3. However, I now have an error when trying to sync:

JSON.parse: expected ',' or '}' after property value in object at line 1 column 1251 of the JSON data SyntaxError: JSON.parse: expected ',' or '}' after property value in object at line 1 column 1251 of the JSON data

There are a bunch of other errors listed but that is listed first and a bunch of times in the Debug Output.

Any idea what could be wrong and/or how to fix this?

One doesn't need to use Papers export into XML and edit the files manually to move from Readcube/Papers to Zotero. I discovered that if you have Endnote installed already (I have v9 installed), that you can export readcube/papers to endnote (references and PDFs will appear in Endnote's imported references). Then you can export these references in an XML file, but not need to edit them. You can drag and drop them directly into Zotero. The PDFs will seem to transfer as well. I'm using Zotfile to help keep pdfs in cloud based folder.

I just switched to Zotero from Papers3 and would like to add my experience here. From within Papers3, I went to File>Export>EndNote XML Library. I then exported my entire library using "EndNote 8 or higher" under EndNote version. I then opened the resulting XML file using TextEdit and replaced all instances of "'" with "'" as per adamsmith's suggestion. Lastly, within Zotero, I went to File>Import>A file and pointed to the edited XML file. Below is a list of what I observed after the library was imported:

1. Some characters didn't import properly, notably "&", quotation marks, and the symbol ">".
2. Some Greek letters imported properly, while in other instances they did not.
3. Italics did not import properly.
4. Some supplemental files did not transfer over. I know Papers3 sometimes removed the extension of supplemental files when importing them into Papers3. I wonder if this caused Zotero to fail to import them.

dear lastbroadcast, I wanted to do the same as you : export as endnote xml but my application Papers3 quit any time I want to do so... Which are the other ways to switch from papers3 to zotero ? I have like 2MB of papers out of zotero. Thank you in advance.

@mareb and @ReidarL:

Are you trying to open papers using macOS Catalina or higher? If so, this is probably the issue. Catalina and higher only support 64-bit apps, and papers is 32-bit. The app might open OK, but won't function properly.

I got around this issue by downloading Parallels and used the free trial period to install macOS Sierra (also downloaded for free) to open papers and export the library as xml.

The whole thing was a faff - I still have a few more days left on the trial period, so if you're quick, you could try to send me your library (if it's not super large) and I'll export it and send it back to you.

*Edit: send me a private message through the forum